History Main / ScullySyndrome

* Parodied in ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'', when religious nut Constable Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets is talking about deity-invoked rains of objects to the skeptical Constable Shoe. He runs down a list, and Shoe's rebuttals get weirder and weirder until eventually Visit mentions a "Sudden and miraculous rain of rain." Shoe replies in exactly the same sort of wording he used before: "Probably solar energy caused water to evaporate from the surface of a body of water, which then condensed into clouds that wind carried across the country, where cold air currents caused the droplets to recondense and fall as liquid water." In other words, the precise scientific explanation for rain. In the same exchange, was a "miraculous rain of elephants." When pressed, Visit concedes, "Well, it was just one elephant, but it made quite a splash."

* In ''ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}}'', Dr. Thirteen exemplifies this trope perfectly

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone'': A particularly dramatic (if not PlayedForHorror) example in the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S4E6DeathShip Death Ship]]". Captain Ross would rather prefer to believe the (equally absurd but that he assumes are more "logical") explanations that his crew is being subjected to time travel or being assaulted by aliens with psychic powers than accept the fact that [[spoiler:they are all DeadAllAlong and the wrecked ship they have encountered holding their bodies is their actual final resting place.]] For further tragedy/horror, Ross' DetrimentalDetermination to believe the only thing that fits all the facts is ''not happening'' [[spoiler:has caused the whole crew to be stuck forever in a loop.]]

* ''[[Literature/ResidentEvil Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy]]'': Jill goes into great detail about why she can only pick certain locks and why she can't simply kick open the ones she can't, which was an [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality Acceptable Break From Reality]] in the game but would be a PlotHole in a book. Being a former ClassyCatBurglar in this version, she thoroughly examines a door and finds that the locking mechanism is so unique and special that even she has no clue how to get it open without a key, and then when she considers kicking it open she finds that the door and the frame are so heavily reinforced that she has no hope in hell of breaking it with her strength alone. She then considers shooting out the lock but fears that the bullet may ricochet and hurt her ([[ShownTheirWork an actual concern in real life]]). It's even her first clue that there's something fishy about the mansion itself, as no regular mansion would ''ever'' do such a thing with interior doors. Barry on the other hand has no problem booting open one of these reinforced doors when he saves Jill from [[MemeticMutation becoming a Jill Sandwich]] because, as a scene in an earlier chapter of him casually carrying a duffel bag that weighed well over 100 pounds implied, he's just ''that'' strong.

* The World of Darkness universe uses this to explain why humanity as a whole does not believe in magic or supernatural creatures. As a player in the Mage universe, you need to shape the magic to be "realistic" to a bystander i.e. The guy wasn't blasted by a wizard with a lightning bolt, he was killed by a power surge through the TV he was standing next to. To stretch reality too far as a Mage brings about Paradox which will force you to pay for violating reality around normal people. Werewolves invoke a form of mass hysteria where onlookers believe they are seeing a junkie or some such throwing people around like ragdolls. Vampires require the Masquerade to be maintained to prevent humanity from realizing there is a threat in their midst and stamping out vampirekind en masse. These mechanics are supposed to make playing characters reign in their more destructive nature until they can really let loose in private or secluded areas. Then the fun times begin with the yelling and the screaming and the wanton bloodshed.
* In Warhammer Fantasy the Empire is this to the Skaven, they can accept magic in most forms but not the existence of a race of ratmen, explaining them away as beast men or madness. This view is kept even though they have been at war with them.
** In this case this is enforced by the authorities, who ''do'' know that there is a massive civilization of Ratmen beneath them but feel this being general knowledge would be too alarming. So those who have seen the Skaven have simply seen mutants or Beastmen who happened to look a bit ratlike, not a completely separate race, despite the fact that no other Beastmen look like that and mutants aren't that uniform in appearance.

* ''Literature/WarriorCats'': Has [[FlatEarthAtheist Mothwing]] who tries to explain medicine cats' [[DreamingOfThingsToCome future-predicting dreams]] as just smart cats working out predictions unconsciously, though this still leaves a lot of questions - like why these dreams have such high accuracy and how leaders end up getting [[CatsHaveNineLives nine lives]] from communicating with [=StarClan=].

* ''Literature/{{Pale}}'': Has Sharon Griggs who's turned this into her own personal superpower and addiction, because of the MagicalUnderpinningsOfReality kept innocent people like Sharon from discovering magic those same underpinnings can kill magical creatures if they aren't careful around innocents. Around Sharon they can start evaporating when she gets close, worse this ''also'' applies to magical bindings that keep dangerous Others and runaway magic contained so she's doubly dangerous.

* ''Literature/WarriorCats'': Has [[FlatEarthAthiest Mothwing]] who tries to explain medicine cats' [[DreamingOfThingsToCome future-predicting dreams]] as just smart cats working out predictions unconsciously, though this still leaves a lot of questions - like why these dreams have such high accuracy and how leaders end up getting [[CatsHaveNineLives nine lives]] from communicating with [=StarClan=].

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone'': A particularly dramatic (if not PlayedForHorror) example in the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E108DeathShip Death Ship]]". Captain Ross would rather prefer to believe the (equally absurd but that he assumes are more "logical") explanations that his crew is being subjected to time travel or being assaulted by aliens with psychic powers than accept the fact that [[spoiler:they are all DeadAllAlong and the wrecked ship they have encountered holding their bodies is their actual final resting place.]] For further tragedy/horror, Ross' DetrimentalDetermination to believe the only thing that fits all the facts is ''not happening'' [[spoiler:has caused the whole crew to be stuck forever in a loop.]]

* One of ''Series/{{Castle}}'''s {{Running Gag}}s is having Castle come up with flatly silly theories to explain unusual crime scenes, often involving things like ninjas or the CIA.

* The Hindrance "Doubting Thomas" in ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'' is exactly this. The character does not believe in the supernatural, and even after being dragged kicking and screaming into admitting that supernatural things exist (i.e. even after encountering something that can't be explained rationally), they still insist to try to explain everything "rationally" first. This in the setting where the supernatural is pretty much commonplace, including player characters.

But don't pat yourself on the back just yet, Scully. If you think about it for more than five seconds, there's a lot that the seemingly "rational" explanation doesn't actually explain at all, or which itself requires increasingly convoluted and improbable further explanations [[VoodooShark which only poke even more holes in the logic.]] For instance, how and where does one even get enough marshmallow to make a fifty-foot marshmallow man and leave its remains scattered over the streets of New York City? How much would that cost, and why is there no record of such a massive purchase? How and where does one make said marshmallow man, and hide it away from everyone until the absolute right moment? How do you get it to move and act convincingly? How do you get it to move ''at all'', for that matter? How do the Ghostbusters set up their "light show" at the building without anyone noticing? The monster steps on a church at one point -- how do you stage that? In fact, the opening of the portal creates earthquakes, lightning storms and unseasonal instantaneous storm clouds that block out the sun -- how could the Ghostbusters create earthquakes, control the weather and turn day into night? How does one spread enough hallucinogens to dose an entire city without anyone noticing, and then manage to ensure that everyone has the same hallucination at the same time -- which is also the time you need them to hallucinate? And for ''that'' matter, how do you control what kind of hallucinations someone has; wouldn't a massive crowd all be hallucinating wildly different things even if given the same drug? When did the Ghostbusters wire the apartment building to blow, including the apartments of several residents? And ultimately, even if you could do all of this, it would all take a lot of effort, and you'd probably need a lot of people to help you do it, all of whom will have to have some kind of motivation to keep quiet -- such as a lot of money. The Ghostbusters are just four guys -- ''how did they manage to do this all by themselves without involving anyone else?''

But don't pat yourself on the back just yet, Scully. If you think about it for more than five seconds, there's a lot that the seemingly "rational" explanation doesn't actually explain at all, or which itself requires increasingly convoluted and improbable further explanations [[VoodooShark which only poke even more holes in the logic.]] For instance, how and where does one even get enough marshmallow to make a fifty-foot marshmallow man and leave its remains scattered over the streets of New York City? How much would that cost, and why is there no record of such a massive purchase? How and where does one make said marshmallow man, and hide it away from everyone until the absolute right moment? How do you get it to move and act convincingly? How do you get it to move ''at all'', for that matter? How do the Ghostbusters set up their "light show" at the building without anyone noticing? The monster steps on a church at one point -- how do you stage that? In fact, the opening of the portal creates earthquakes, lightning storms and unseasonal instantaneous storm clouds that block out the sun -- how could the Ghostbusters create earthquakes, control the weather and turn day into night? How does one spread enough hallucinogens to dose an entire city without anyone noticing, and then manage to ensure that everyone has the same hallucination at the same time -- which is also the time you need them to hallucinate? And for ''that'' matter, how do you control what kind of hallucinations someone has; wouldn't a massive crowd all be hallucinating wildly different things even if given the same drug? When did the Ghostbusters wire the apartment building to blow, including the apartments of several residents? And ultimately, even if you could do all of this, it would all take a lot of effort, and you'd probably need a lot of people to help you do it, all of whom will have to have some kind of motivation to keep quiet -- such as as a lot of money. The Ghostbusters are just four guys -- ''how did they manage to do this all by themselves without involving anyone else?''

** In one of the episodes of ''The Poet And The Lunatics'', the VillainOfTheWeek suffers from a horrifyingly virulent strain of this and grows increasingly obsessed with reversing and breaking superstitions, until he slits a man's throat in sheer terror when the man threatens to act even once in accord with superstition.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* After a red rain in India, a local "scientist" decided to come up with a "scientific" explanation to counter the peoples' supernatural explanations for the "blood." It was a convoluted and downright-silly explanation involving bats killed at high altitude by a meteor (the actual cause was red algae - not paranormal, but nowhere near as ridiculous as the bat blood).
* Any and every attempt to scientifically justify the existence of real-life vampires. "Explanations" include schizophrenia, diabetes, rabies, and porphyria, both of which actually fail miserably. Aside from the diseases not doing what they think they do ([[ArtisticLicenseMedicine you can't treat porphyria by drinking blood, for example]]), the vampires they're usually trying to explain [[NewerThanTheyThink were the product of Hollywood and 20th-century literature.]] Older vampire legends are much more like zombie, revenant, or ghost stories; their behavior doesn't resemble sufferers from rabies or porphyria.
** On the other hand, comparing pre-Victorian vampire accounts to modern understandings of how corpses decompose is [[https://iu.instructure.com/files/55661338/download?download_frd=1 very enlightening]].
* Young Earth creationists like Kent Hovind try to "scientifically" explain miracles in the Bible, and let's just leave it at that.
** Many fundamentalists of all religions do this. Which is, come to think of it, counterproductive - a miracle is simply God deciding to override the rules of the Universe for a moment, and a "scientific explanation" requires these rules to bend in weird, improbable ways on their own accord. One might well argue that a miracle by definition couldn't have a scientific explanation, as that would mean it's explained by natural (i.e. non-divine) causes. This depends on how you define a miracle, of course-some have held that natural causes can be miraculous when they're so unlikely and fortuitous that no explanation except God ultimately setting things up just right (even if not directly causing them) would suffice.
* Many a ConspiracyTheorist falls victim to this. In many cases, the "alternate" explanation is so convoluted that, if it was even possible to pull off in the first place, it would be impossible to keep hidden; either conscious whistle-blowing or sheer incompetence would lead to the truth being revealed sooner or later.
* "Adding epicycles" is an expression for adding ad-hoc and unreasonable complexities to a theory [[MovingTheGoalposts in order to make it consistent with new observations]]. The basis of the phrase is historical attempts to make geocentrism consistent with the observed movements of the planets by proposing that they orbit around Earth in paths with inner loops or "epicycles". Heliocentrism is a much simpler explanation (however the theories first proposed for it still had many holes).
** And now string theorists are resurrecting the fashion, constantly adding more dimensions to balance equations.
* Many sightings of unexplained "ghost lights" (which are often thought to be [[FlyingSaucer UFOs]], or some supernatural thing) have been blamed on burning swamp gas. This is rather unlikely as, for one, the conditions for swamp gas to spontaneously ignite are rather unlikely to occur in nature, and two, when swamp gas has been ignited in lab experiments, it behaves nothing like how the stereotypical ghost lights work, instead just burning a blue-green color for a few seconds before burning out. This isn't to say there's no possible mundane explanation, just that "burning swamp gas" isn't it.
[[/folder]]

A self-applied case of WeirdnessCensor by a character, particularly one considered or who considers themselves rational or skeptical. When a sufferer of Scully Syndrome attempts to offer a "rational" explanation for a supernatural situation, they will usually end up offering an explanation that is itself so tortuous, convoluted and[=/=]or improbable that it also ceases to be rational. This explanation may draw upon things that are seemingly more plausible and 'realistic' than the supernatural explanation, but the way it puts these things together is unlikely or full of holes. The EpilepticTrees invoked by the characters -- who, ironically, are usually trying to ''debunk'' someone else's Epileptic Trees -- are so ludicrous that the viewers want to bash the character's head against the wall, all while pointing out that accepting the supernatural explanation would, in fact, be [[OccamsRazor simpler.]] The character also has a tendency to ignore any evidence of the supernatural that they might be presented with, no matter how conclusive, in favour of presenting more 'rational' explanations that are just as (if not more) lacking in supporting evidence.

As alluded to above, a marking feature of AgentScully. Compare InvisibleToNormals, ArbitrarySkepticism, FlatEarthAtheist. Not to be confused with the real [[http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/w/weinstein_kliman_scully_syndrome/intro.htm Weinstein Kliman Scully syndrome.]]

It is important to note that, the most common interpretation of OccamsRazor aside, the simplest explanation isn't ''always'' the correct one.[[note]]Occam's Razor actually states that the explanation with the fewest unknown variables is usually the correct one, not just the simplest explanation.[[/note]] Sufferers of Scully Syndrome aren't always wrong. Many frauds and con-jobs have relied on people being willing to believe a simple explanation without stopping to consider that someone ''might'' actually engage in some highly improbable and unbelievable course of action if they think they'll benefit from doing so. Scully Syndrome is not a problem because skepticism of the supernatural and unlikely or a belief in the rational are bad in and of themselves. It is a problem because it allows someone to use rationalism as an excuse to not consider any possibilities that challenge or disprove their current beliefs or worldview, even when those alternative possibilities are actually valid and supported with evidence. That Agent Scully doesn't automatically and unquestioningly believe aliens did it is fine, but it's when Agent Scully starts constructing equally implausible "rational" narratives rather than accepting the evidence that aliens, against all odds, actually ''did'' do it that it starts to become an issue.

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

* Happens to Cilan in ''Anime/PokemonTheSeriesBlackAndWhite'' during the course of the museum episode. He keeps suggesting ridiculous things to explain the mysterious circumstances, even though it becomes increasingly clear that there is a ghost, like Iris suggested. Subverted when it's revealed that they're both wrong - it was a Ghost ''Pokémon''.

* ''Anime/YokuWakaruGendaiMahou'': Souishirou. Despite his big sister being a mage, and the fact that people arround him get involved in all sorts of magical troubles, he remain firmly skceptical. Even when he see magic performed right in front of his own eyes, he insist that it is just a trick. [[spoiler:Magic have absolutely no effect on him, because his sister unknowingly made him invulnerable to it when he was a child.]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* Mr. Terrific from ''ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica'' is an adamant atheist despite encountering many god like beings and witnessing the use of magic many times; due to this he was unable to communicate with Gog.

[[folder: Fan Works]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* Discussed in ''Journey Back to Christmas'', when main character Hannah is a nurse from the 1940s who has been sent over seventy years into the future, with various parties speculating that she's just pretending to be from the past to get free accommodation. While trying to determine if she's telling the truth or just delusional, investigating parties note that Hannah could have acquired her clothes from a local shop specialising in antique clothing at a reasonable cost, but the local sheriff- and one of the first people to meet Hannah- tests a bottle of perfume in her purse, which the lab determines is a particularly rare perfume that people stopped making in the 1950s, and yet the bottle Hannah had on her is still usable. It's acknowledge that it wouldn't be ''impossible'' for Hannah to have found a bottle that had been kept by a collector and was still in good condition, but it would have cost a considerable amount to buy such a bottle to cover a relatively minor detail for a story that people were unlikely to believe. Coupled with the fact that the only thing Hannah is doing is basically helping people have a more "traditional" Christmas, including going carol-singing and finding lost decorations for a Christmas party in the local park, it's soon easy to dismiss any accusations that Hannah has some agenda.

[[folder: Literature ]]
* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' does this. It hams up the "humanity is just too stupid and frightened to accept magic" message. In parallel, it points out that our capabilities have been growing rapidly, so while hordes of angry muggles was always the equivalent of the nuclear option ... now we come with the literal variant, too.

** At one point he even says that most people's subconscious has a kind of built-in WeirdnessCensor, because if they were to acknowledge some of the strange things they saw as magical or supernatural, it might well drive them insane. Their minds ''automatically'' search for a mundane explanation, without their necessarily even being aware of it.

* Parodied in ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'', when religious nut Constable Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets is talking about deity-invoked rains of objects to the skeptical Constable Shoe. He runs down a list, and Shoe's rebuttals get weirder and weirder, until eventually Visit mentions a "Sudden and miraculous rain of rain." Shoe replies in exactly the same sort of wording he used before: "Probably solar energy caused water to evaporate from the surface of a body of water, which then condensed into clouds that wind carried across the country, where cold air currents caused the droplets to recondense and fall as liquid water." In other words, the precise scientific explanation for rain. In the same exchange, was a "miraculous rain of elephants." When pressed, Visit concedes, "Well, it was just one elephant, but it made quite a splash."

** Discussed in ''[[Literature/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch The Hole In The Wall]]'', where it forms the key to the story's plot. As a main character puts it, if you go into a town which has an inn by the name of St. George and the Dragon, and tell everyone that it's a corruption of King George and the Dragoon, a lot of people will believe you on no evidence just because it sounds mundane. Similarly, when someone decided to say that Prior's Park (the estate where the mystery takes place) was not a priory, but the dwelling of a Mr. Prior, nobody ever asked whether anyone had heard of Mr. Prior or whether there were any records of him. In actual fact, the place was a priory. Finally, and most importantly, the district is spelt Holinwall on the maps, and the educated mock the peasantry for pronouncing it Holiwell. But it is spelt wrong and pronounced right. There was a holy well, and a certain corpse was dumped down that well earlier.

* Discussed in ''Literature/TheHoundOfTheBaskervilles''; at several points, [[TheWatson Dr. Watson]] hears a horrible baying noise over the mires which can only be a massive dog, and which the superstitious locals attribute to the titular Hound, a fearsome and murderous HellHound supposedly haunting a nearby wealthy family. Watson scoffs at the supernatural explanation, but admits that he's currently hard-pressed to offer a more rational explanation because there are several gaping holes in any explanation that he can think of which seemingly can't be answered away. Of course, this is a Literature/SherlockHolmes story, so those logical and rational explanations actually are there; it just takes Sherlock Holmes himself to uncover them, put them together and fill in the gaps.

* ''Literature/TheMasterAndMargarita'': The devil in human form visits Moscow and wreaks havoc there. After he leaves, the Soviet authorities are left with the problem of how to explain all the supernatural goings-on. They settle upon "[[SharedMassHallucination mass hypnosis]]". Apparently the mysterious foreign visitor is a skilful hypnotist who can, for example, convince an entire theatre that money bills are raining from the ceiling. What, then, about that one guy who was transported in an instant from Moscow to Sochi on the Black Sea? Why, he never ''was'' in Sochi; he was only hypnotized to believe he was. But what about all those people ''in'' Sochi who saw him there and talked to him? Why, they were hypnotized as well; apparently the visiting stranger can perform such prodigious feats as hypnotize people from more than a thousand kilometers away!
* ''Literature/{{Pale}}'': Has Sharon Griggs who's turned this into her own personal superpower and addiction, because of the MagicalUnderpinningsOfReality kept innocent people like Sharon from discovering magic those same underpinnings can kill magical creatures if they aren't careful around innocents. Around Sharon they can start evaporating when she gets close, worse this ''also'' applies to magical bindings that keep dangerous Others and run away magic contained so she's doubly dangerous.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]
* Named after Dana Scully of ''Series/TheXFiles'', who was particularly adamant in her denial of the supernatural. As their encounters with fairly obvious supernatural cases grew this got quite ridiculous. As cracked.com put it: "After personally witnessing aliens, a cannibal mutant, psychic children, vengeful ghosts, mind-controlling insects, the ghost of an alien, pyrokinesis, the ghost of her father, shape-shifters, body-switching, reverse-aging, faith-healing, a telepathic frozen human head, a radioactive leech-man, subliminal mind control, vampires, Native American sorcery, precognition, astrology, gargoyles, telekinesis, Chinese sorcery, a sea monster, a golem, past life regression, Frankenstein's Monster, a demon-possessed doll, a giant intelligent shape-shifting beetle monster, time travel, demonic possession, psychic weather control, the Grim reaper, time loops, zombies, doppelgangers, a giant human bat, voodoo, alternate dimensions, transmogrification, a kid that can command insects, another golem, a genie and an ancient piece of potter inscribed with the words of Jesus that can raise the dead, Scully continues to mock Mulder for believing in the paranormal." In Dana Scully's and the series defense, this trope did get downplayed as the series went on and she got used to the supernatural being the usual suspect.

* In ''Series/{{Medium}}'', Allison's husband, Joe, will greet 90% of his wife's prophecies with skepticism, despite the fact that they will always prove to be meaningful if not completely true. This is justified because Allison's visions appear as metaphors (mostly in her dreams) that she rarely correctly interprets the first time around. Allison also has a tendency to believe that her visions give her the moral obligation to take illegal action. For instance, there was one time that she [[ItMakesSenseInContext kidnapped a baby from his mother in order to save the baby from a death she foresaw in a vision.]].

[[folder: Magazines ]]

* Magazine/ForteanTimes delights in calling out skeptics and rationalists for this sort of thinking, arguing that it is no sort of explanation for anomalous phenomena when the "explanation" is more labored, tortuous and convoluted than a simple acceptance that something strange has happened, which is inexplicable by accepted science. Of course, skeptics and rationalists in turn often point out that something not ''yet'' having a credible explanation is not the same as something being completely ''without'' an explanation. Also how in many cases, explanations presented by believers involve either flawed recollections of events or deliberate attempts at fraud.

[[folder: Newspaper Comics ]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

* Human beings are literally ''forced'' to do this sort of thing to themselves in ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'', as their minds are mystically warped to deny the presence of magic due to the Lie. Should a human's mind not be able to take the strain of denial, the human will either go insane or Awaken and become a mage him-or-herself.

* The World of Darkness universe uses this to explain why humanity as a whole does not believe in magic or supernatural creatures. As a player in the Mage universe you need to shape the magic to be "realistic" to a bystander i.e. The guy wasn't blasted by a wizard with a lightning bolt, he was killed by a power surge through the TV he was standing next too. To stretch reality to far as a Mage brings about Paradox which will force you to pay for violating reality around normal people. Werewolves invoke a form of mass hysteria where onlookers believe they are seeing a junkie or some such throwing people around like ragdolls. Vampires require the Masquerade to be maintained to prevent humanity from realizing there is a threat in their midst and stamping out vampire kind en masse. These mechanics are supposed to make playing characters reign in their more destructive nature until they can really let loose in private or secluded areas. Then the fun times begin with the yelling and the screaming and the wanton bloodshed.

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''VideoGame/PathOfExile'': Niles is a FlatEarthAtheist who despite being a Templar for years, firmly believes the gods are a myth. If the entirety of [[KillTheGod Act 2]] has anything to show, that's not true. He wasn't there to see it first-hand, which conveniently let him maintain his insane conspiracy theories of what the divine phenomenons actually are. He thinks the Templars faked a cannibal god rampaging and consuming an ''an entire nation's populace''. Even when his attempts to prove the gods don't exist backfired, he thinks his methods aren't working as intended. This is on top of the fact he's a ''mind reader'', and he thinks the witnesses have something MoreThanMindControl going on in them. As for what he thinks you were doing when you were directly slaying the gods? Probably breathing in too much crypt gas.

[[folder: Visual Novels ]]

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': One arc has the Tagons on a tropical resort and losing one of their own to a giant shark. Except there are no sharks on that world (it was grown in a secret gene-lab by a MadScientist), so the local police keep finding new and inventive reasons for the Toughs to be behind the attacks. At the end of the arc the Toughs' attorney is suing the cops for "impersonating a police force".

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'', Peggy is involved in a magic trick in which she seemingly disappears from a flaming pinata and reappears at her table. Hank, who does not believe in magic, attempts to come of with increasingly ludicrous ways in which she escaped, while Peggy insists it was just magic. [[spoiler: Subverted in TheStinger, which reveals the perfectly rational way the trick was performed, but was never considered by Hank.]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* Any and every attempt to scientifically justify the existence of real-life vampires. "Explanations" include schizophrenia, diabetes, rabies, and porphyria, both of which actually fail miserably. Aside from the diseases not doing what they think they do ([[ArtisticLicenseMedicine you can't treat porphyria by drinking blood, for example]]), the vampires they're usually trying to explain [[NewerThanTheyThink were the product of Hollywood and 20th century literature.]] Older vampire legends are much more like zombie, revenant or ghost stories; their behavior doesn't resemble sufferers from rabies or porphyria.

* Young Earth creationists like Kent Hovind who try to "scientifically" explain miracles in the Bible, and let's just leave it at that.

* In ''Literature/LeftBehind''--no one except the main characters ever thinks of the mass disappearances as being caused by the Rapture, even though premillennialism is a well-known theological concept. Some possible explanations are rational enough, but everyone believes the [[BigBad Antichrist's]] bizarre "nuclear warheads-electromagnetism-NegativeSpaceWedgie" theory. (Main characters, on the other hand, act as if they've [[FunctionalGenreSavvy read the book jacket]].)
** For that matter, this is a problem with 95% of Rapture-themed fiction - much of it seems to act as if only a tiny number of people are vaguely familiar with the Book of Revelation, and to the extent they are, they Scully-style dismiss it even when crazy events are exactly following the script.
* In ''Literature/InfernoLarryNivenAndJerryPournelle'', Allen Carpentier's attempts to interpret his experiences as a product of [[ClarkesThirdLaw super-advanced technology]] may be more unreasonable than accepting the reality that Hell exists and he's in it.

* The police in ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet1984'' are quick to assume Tina was knifed to death by her boyfriend and nothing out of the ordinary happened- in spite of the fact that she was obviously raked across the ceiling at some point and the blood is there to prove it. The fact that no one offers a "rational" explanation for Glen's insane OverdrawnAtTheBloodBank death in the third act shows no one knows what to believe anymore.

* ''Literature/TheLongDarkTeaTimeOfTheSoul'' has a lengthy bit about this, justifying Dirk's conviction that the impossible is more likely than the improbable. He cites the example of a girl who is apparently constantly reciting stock market prices exactly one day behind schedule, able to keep up with the figures as prices rise and fall but always twenty-four hours out of sync. The doctors treating her observe that, as scientists, they are focused on the idea that she is somehow receiving this information through more mundane means and simply creating the illusion that she's coming up with the data out of thin air, but Dirk counters that since the idea she's presenting the data from nothing is impossible it's actually more likely to be true. In Dirk's words, the idea that she's capable of this is simply impossible, but the idea that she's masterminded a complex and elaborate hoax of no obvious benefit to herself is highly improbable; the impossible solution just suggests that something is going on that nobody else knows about, but the improbable one runs contrary to aspects of human nature that people ''do'' know about.

* ''Literature/TheLongDarkTeaTimeOfTheSoul'' has a lengthy bit about this, justifying Dirk's conviction that the impossible is more likely than the improbable.

ScullySyndrome

* The outright extreme example that occurs in between ''Film/Ghostbusters1984'' and ''Film/GhostbustersII'' (and is an important piece of the HappyEndingOverride) is explained above. The fact that the events of the first film temporarily calmed down the supernatural in New York City so the Ghostbusters couldn't find work also didn't helped any.

* The police in Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet1984 are quick to assume Tina was knifed to death by her boyfriend and nothing out of the ordinary happened- in spite of the fact that she was obviously raked across the ceiling at some point and the blood is there to prove it. The fact that no one offers a "rational" explanation for Glen's insane OverdrawnAtTheBloodBank death in the third act shows no one knows what to believe anymore.

** Many fundamentalists of all religions do this. Which is, come to think of it, counterproductive - a miracle is simply God deciding to override the rules of the Universe for a moment, and a "scientific explanation" requires these rules to bend in weird, improbable ways on their own accord.

* ''Film/RedLights'': Tom Buckley is a physicist helping to expose fraudulent paranormal activities, such as mediums or performing miracle workers. [[spoiler:In the end, we discover that the strange events revolving around Silver - birds smashing into windows, electronics exploding, rooms shaking - is not Silver's doing, but Buckley's. He himself is a psychic, working to refute the frauds in order to discover another such as himself.]]

** Another explanation comes from Creator/GrantMorrison's ''ComicBook/{{Zatanna}}'' mini-series. There Dr. Thirteen joins Zatanna and a few other DC universe occultists for a seance/spiritual voyage. He seems to at least in some way experience what his companions experience, but he explains everything through quantum physics, not spiritualism or the occult.